The forthcoming UK election is in most ways very different from the Greek contest just past. The UK economy is growing and its currency is outside of the Eurozone. In 2010 David Cameron and George Osborne might have pretended that both the British and Greek economies were clinging together on a cliff’s edge, but Greece was in much deeper trouble then and is now. The UK economy was growing in 2010 and following a second recession it grows again.

There is though one parallel and it is an important one. The election in Greece was about power, where it lies and who wields it. Voters refused to accept that control lay with the European Central Bank and Angela Merkel alone. No Greek voter had elected Merkel or the ECB. In their election they asserted a right to take a different course. This assertion will be sorely tested in the highly charged months to come.

We may get some answer to the questions: how much power lies with voters? How much lies with a distant bank and the equally faraway leader of another country?

Similar questions fuel the unpredictable election here. Indeed they are the cause of the unpredictability. Hidden behind the familiar campaign exchanges about the economy and the NHS the British election is also about the nature of power, where it is wielded and by whom. These were the questions posed in the Scottish referendum and lie behind the extraordinary rise of the SNP that has followed since.

Read more

Alex Salmond struggled during that campaign with precisely the same issue the newly elected Greek prime minister faces now. How to assert political autonomy while sharing a currency? With genuine conviction Osborne and Ed Balls insisted that an independent Scotland would not be able to keep the pound while Salmond could contemplate no alternative.

Similarly in Greece the new government wants to remain part of the Euro while asserting its right to pursue a course that alarms more powerful elected leaders who share the same currency. Who rules, the independent government or those that set the terms for membership of the euro?

We do not know what would have happened in Scotland if Salmond had won the referendum, although I am certain that both Osborne and Balls meant what they said about an independent Scotland not being able to share the pound. What we do know is the SNP’s vision of political autonomy shines more brightly in the aftermath of defeat.

10/25
Greece elections 2015

11/25
Greece elections 2015

A voter casts his ballot in front of a map of Greece at a polling station in a school in Athens

12/25
Greece elections 2015

A woman casts her ballot at a polling station in a school in a suburb of Athens near Athens

13/25
Greece elections 2015

Supporters of the opposition radical leftist Syriza party cheer at exit poll results which indicate that Syriza have a clear lead in in Athens

14/25
Greece elections 2015

Anti-austerity Syriza supporters celebrate after the first exit polls, as they gather at the Syriza election kiosk in Athens

15/25
Greece elections 2015

Media crew set up in the balconies of a hotel overlooking the Greek Parliament building in Athens

16/25
Greece elections 2015

Political party papers are organised at a polling station in a school in Athens

17/25
Greece elections 2015

The Greek flag flies on top of the Greek parliament in Athens, as the nation goes to the polls. Greece votes in a crucial general election that could bring the anti-austerity Syriza party to power and lead to a re-negotiation of the country's international bailout

18/25
Greece elections 2015

Alexis Tsipras is welcomed as he arrives for a pre-election campaign speech

AP

19/25
Greece elections 2015

Prime Minister and leader of the conservative New Democracy party Antonis Samara delivers a pre-election speech

Getty Images

20/25
Greece elections 2015

The Leader of Pasok (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) Evangelos Venizelos speaks during a parliament meeting in December 2014

AP

21/25
Greece elections 2015

Alexis Tsipras, head of the Syriza left-wing main opposition party, on the campaign trail

AP

22/25
Greece elections 2015

Election posters for the communist party adorn a derelict shop in Athens

Getty Images

23/25
Greece elections 2015

Ballet dancers, performing for a film in Athens, dance in front of the Parliament building ahead of the general election

Getty Images

24/25
Greece elections 2015

Workers put up polling station signs at a school in Athens

EPA

25/25
Greece elections 2015

Supporters cheer as head of the conservative New Democracy party Antonis Samara arrives at the Taekwondo Indoor Stadium in Athens to give a pre-election address

Getty Images

Some 45 per cent voted for independence in Scotland and awoke the next morning to find a distant Conservative prime minister speaking outside Number 10 telling them what would happen next. But in Scotland, the population had different ideas. The SNP acquired crowds of new members, frustrated by the sight of a UK prime minister continuing to wield a degree of power over them

A sense of powerlessness extends well beyond Scotland. In parts of England voters fear that immigrants take their jobs while power is wielded from Brussels. The increased scrutiny of Ukip – exposing the fragilities, contradictions and whacky views of senior figures – has only limited significance in the short term. Powerless voters have a party that appears to be offering new forms of democratic empowerment by leaving Europe.

The increased support for the Greens is part of the same pattern. Once again in the short term it is of limited significance that many of the Greens’ policies are not costed, the party is divided and when it gets the chance to rule, as it has in Brighton, it fails to deliver.

For the time being they are the ones that stand out from what appears superficially to be a Westminster consensus on the deficit. Those who feel threatened by the cuts to come, largely unheard in the London-based media, have a voice that speaks for them.

An electoral debate about power is not an easy one for the mainstream parties in the UK as they are identified with the current arrangements that seem to take it away from the population. Perhaps that is why on the whole they tend to stick to orthodox topics. Once more today, in order to mark the final hundred days until the general election, the Conservatives will focus on the economy and Labour on the NHS. But both will make a big miscalculation if they ignore the pivotal debate about where power lies, not least because they have developed and important views to espouse.

Cameron’s early leadership was all about his version of empowerment, policies that were supposed to bypass the state in order to give direct powers to parents, patients, tenants, charities and the rest. He used to call it his big idea, a redistribution of power. In his early conference speeches Ed Miliband offered an alternative vision, one where the state intervened to liberate people trapped in markets that did not work and where the state accepted a degree of responsibility in providing higher levels of training and access to universities.

There is also a very big difference between the two of them on the pace and scale of spending cuts, a contrast arising partly from contrasting views as to whether the modern state stifles individuals or can help to empower them.

From so-called free schools to an overhaul of the NHS Cameron has sought to implement his vision. There is little evidence that voters feel more empowered. Part of Miliband’s dilemma as a leader has been how much he should be a change-maker and how much a reassuring centrist. There are not many parallels with Greece, but the voters’ sense of powerlessness in the face of distant forces is one that applies here too. The parallel should help to resolve Miliband’s dilemma. In the UK battle over where power lies he must be a change-maker.